Making New Friends as an Adult Takes Intentionality and Vulnerability
January 11, 2024
While it may seem less accessible to make friends as an adult, all friendships must be built
There are days in my therapy practice when it seems like all I do is talk to patients about being lonely and wanting new friends. Friends can seem to be everywhere and hard to find at the same time. People assume that everyone else has the right friends and they’re the only ones who feel isolated. This simply isn’t true. Making friends takes a lot of effort and can seem less and less accessible as you get older.
Early in life, you make friends by convenience and proximity: going to school, playing in the neighborhood, and having your parents schedule playdates with their friends’ kids. Even in college, you frequently make friends on campus, whether in a dorm, clubs, or class. When you leave school, this method of making friends becomes harder, especially as work and home life get busier. However, even in childhood, friendships rarely just happen. New friendships must be built and require both intentionality and vulnerability.
Admitting you need new friends and coming to know yourself and what you want/need in a friendship are crucial first steps
In a segment, “How to Make Friends the Grown-up Way,” on The Brian Lehrer Show, an on-the-street interview quotes Sophie who says, “The hardest part of making friends is admitting you want to make new friends because you feel like when you’re an adult, you should already have friends and found your place in the world.” Sophie nails it—it is challenging to realize that something is missing in your adult life. However, admitting to yourself that you need new friends is a necessary first step. If you don’t admit that you are missing a needed relationship or have a hole in living a fuller life, you can’t look deeper at what you’re lacking and, then, find new relationships.
A key part of this process before you invite someone else in is coming to know yourself—what you like, what you’re drawn to, and what feels missing. It’s also helpful to consider what your current or previous friendships have been like, particularly if something feels lacking in these relationships. This is also an opportunity to ask questions about what you want and need in a new friend. What does your ideal friendship look like? What do you want to give and receive in this relationship? What do you need from someone at this moment in life?
Sometimes a desire for new friends relates to changing circumstances and where you are in life, which brings to light that your current relationships have shifted. For example, if you’re a newly single person, you may need other singles to mingle with rather than hanging with partnered friends. Or if you become a step-parent, you may need others who have similar family experiences to relate to, vent to, and learn from. In these cases, it’s important to take a moment to mourn the change and acknowledge it rather than pretend it hasn’t happened. As you acknowledge this, you’re also able to name, “I need friends who are going through similar things and are in similar places in life,” and begin to seek that out.
Similar to dating, making friends requires intention and a lot of curiosity
Though we don’t often think of it this way, building a friendship is similar to the intentionality of dating. When you say you’re going on a date, you are organizing yourself to understand the bounds of what is happening—trying to know your date on a deeper level and discovering if there is chemistry between you. Like in dating, making space to grow a new friendship requires consideration, including taking stock of your day-to-day life and how you are (or aren’t) putting yourself out there for friendships. Are you putting out vibes that say, “I want to play! I’m open to others and am ready to hang!”? Or are you hiding in “easy” known relationships or isolating yourself?
One way to put yourself out there with new friendships is through curiosity. Similar to dating, asking deeper questions of a person with whom you want to build a friendship is both a means to get closer to this person, as well as learn if there is a connection. Who are they in the world? What do they enjoy doing on their own or with others? Maybe you are taking a yoga class with a classmate who you talk to casually before or after class. You can take a step closer by finding out more about them. What do they like to do other than yoga? Do they take other classes? Perhaps this shared activity could lead to other shared activities. It’s essential to also be aware that sometimes you find out you can’t build a friendship: you’re too different, incompatible, or not in the same lines of thinking.
Sometimes the act of getting closer can be as simple as naming that you would like to spend time with this person, including being blunt and saying straight out, “I hope we can build a friendship.” Granted, voicing that you want a friendship isn’t always easy to do. It can feel awkward and vulnerable to say you want to be close to someone as a friend since there isn’t the same social norm around being direct about a friendship as there is around romantic relationships. Even so, after you name it, the cat is out of the bag, so to speak. Then, two people have to work together to build a friendship.
Allowing yourself (and your new friend) to be vulnerable while still being self-protective is key to building a friendship
Like saying you want a friendship, letting someone get to know you and you them is a vulnerable activity. If the other person is up for it, they, too, have to be vulnerable. In a sense, both friends put down the gates of loneliness and protection to let someone else come to know them fully and join together to build a friendship. Both are sharing parts of themselves that are already built while being open to being influenced by another.
It's important to build vulnerability in a friendship slowly. You don’t have to have it all at once. Building a friendship requires parameters, whether planning set activities such as going for an hour-long walk or seeing an art exhibition or deciding in advance what you want to talk about and what topics can wait (maybe you decide to not talk about exes, partners, kids, or jobs yet). This way, you can come to know a friend little by little while still being self-protective. You can allow yourself time and space to find out if this person you are curious about knowing is someone you actually want to build something with.
Some people can struggle with this process by either building a friendship too fast and allowing themselves to be too vulnerable too soon or, conversely, not putting themselves out there. Therapy can be a place to evaluate what you want in a friendship, learn how to be vulnerable in a way that is still self-protective, and discover ways you can improve in friendship.
Sometimes things that are preventing individuals from building friendships show up in the therapeutic relationship. This can be an opportunity to unpack, understand, and maybe do some teaching around how to work through it. For example, a patient may seem closed-off, assuming I’m judging them even though I’m not. Together, we can find out how they may look for ways to be rejected in a relationship, which prevents them from getting closer to people and possibly protects them in ways that were useful when they were younger but are not working now. Similarly, I may notice someone’s defense of taking the blame, which can open up discussion in therapy about the complexity of this response, how this may make them feel safer in a relationship but not necessarily closer, and where the roots of that response may lie in their family or earlier life. By sitting with what you want in friends or what you need to build a friendship with a new person, you can find out what you are blocking, what you need to learn to be open to, and what you need to rebuild so your life has more pleasure, community, play, and fullness with friendships as part of your life.
